write.table writes unwanted leading empty column to header when has rownames

Question

check this example:

> a = matrix(1:9, nrow = 3, ncol = 3, dimnames = list(LETTERS[1:3], LETTERS[1:3]))
> a
  A B C
A 1 4 7
B 2 5 8
C 3 6 9

Answer 1

I revised a simple function from @mnel, which adds flexibility by using connections. Here is the function:

my.write <- function(x, file, header, f = write.csv, ...){
# create and open the file connection
datafile <- file(file, open = 'wt')
# close on exit 
on.exit(close(datafile))
# if a header is defined, write it to the file (@CarlWitthoft's suggestion)
if(!missing(header)) {
writeLines(header,con=datafile, sep='\t')
writeLines('', con=datafile, sep='\n')
}
# write the file using the defined function and required addition arguments  
f(x, datafile,...)
}

You can specify the function to be 'write.table', 'write.csv', 'write.delim' etc.

Cheers!